Treatments and subjects Books

Book SynopsisThe coming of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century witnessed unprecedented changes in society: rapid economic progress went hand-in-hand with appalling working conditions, displacement, squalor and destitution for those at the bottom of the social scale. These new circumstances presented a challenge to contemporary image-makers, who wished to capture the effects of hunger, poverty and alienation in Britain, Ireland and France in the era before documentary photography. In this groundbreaking book, the eminent art historian Linda Nochlin examines the styles and expressive strategies that were used by artists and illustrators to capture this misère, roughly characterized as poverty that afflicts both body and soul. She investigates images of the Irish Famine in the period 184651; the gendered representation of misery, particularly of poor women and prostitutes; and the work of three very different artists: Théodore Géricault, Gustave Courbet and the less wellknown Fernand Pelez. The artists' desire to depict the poor and the outcast accurately and convincingly is still a pertinent issue, though now, as Nochlin observes, the question has a moral and ethical dimension does the documentary style belittle its subjects and degrade their condition?Trade Review'Nochlin’s influence on critical writing and teaching is legendary, and this engrossing analysis of the visual representation of misery in the 19th century is a must-read for anyone hoping to address our troubling times' - Cindy Sherman'This slim, erudite, enlightened volume is a heartfelt coda to [Linda Nochlin’s] oeuvre' - Financial Times'Brilliant and important … Nochlin was a trailblazer to the end' - Apollo'Nochlin speaks clearly and simply to the ongoing question of whether art can or should be form of activism' - Art Review'A fresh perspective to the emotive and controversial subject of depicting the poor … insightful art criticism meets social history' - The Lady'What endures in this final book is a fixation with the past as a portal to present misères, whether persistent gender inequalities or economic disparities as extreme as those of the industrial age' - Scotland on Sunday'It is to Linda Nochlin’s credit that she found the words to match the images that form the heart of this beautifully produced book' - Spectator'Lively and fascinating … a valuable publication' - Irish Arts Review'A fascinating coda to a great career' - Frances Spalding, GuardianTable of ContentsMisère: An Introduction • 1. Misère: The Irish Paradigm • 2. The Gender of Misery • 3. Géricault, Goya and the Representation of Misery • 4. Representing Misery: Courbet’s Beggar Woman • 5. Fernand Pelez: Master of Miserable Old Men • Conclusion

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Book SynopsisShowcasing the artistic talents of Helena Elias, Louise Goalby, and Karolina Salamon, this playful wall calendar offers a dozen bewitching, cat-themed illustrations to comfort and energize you throughout the year.

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Book SynopsisThis text offers a sustained demonstration of the way in which works of art can help us to explore the most difficult ethical and political issues of our time: war, terror, extermination, torture and abuse.Trade ReviewOn Art and War and Terror collects Alex Danchev's beautifully lucid and thoughtful essays on the most difficult issues of our age and, in particular, the nature of humanity in times of conflict. -- Karen Shook Times Higher Education A Times Higher Education Book of the Week (September 2009). This collection of essays looks at first sight like one of those books of mostly previously published work that have been hung on a frame to give the impression of unity. But it is, in fact, a much more powerful, united and beautifully strange book than that. While academics are frequently exhorted to aspire to interdisciplinary work, this often boils down to tacking a discussion of a novel on to a piece of historical writing, or making reference to a few events to contextualise a picture. Real interdisciplinary work goes on when there is something unifying and unique beyond, or perhaps below, the academy's usual disciplinary boundaries. This is the case with Alex Danchev's work, and with this book. -- Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway, University of London Times Higher Education The range of these beautifully crafted essays is often dazzling. At his best, Danchev reveals himself to be a gifted and profound essayist. -- Bryan Cheyette The Independent Alex Danchev's series of essays remind us why he is one of the most perceptive and witty scholars writing in Britain today. -- Andrew Roberts The Sunday Telegraph (Reviews Editor) One of the most important books I have had the pleasure to read in a long time... When reading this thoughtful and thought-provoking book terms that come to mind include lucid, illuminating, mesmerizing, all of which are analytically weak but indicative nevertheless of what makes this book such a profound reading experience... The author is not impressed by disciplinary borders: borders are there to be ignored, frontiers are meeting-places. Art thinks. Art makes us think. Art makes us think otherwise. Art helps us make a judgement, a moral judgement. -- Frank Moller, University of Tampere Millennium: Journal of International Studies On Art and War and Terror collects Alex Danchev's beautifully lucid and thoughtful essays on the most difficult issues of our age and, in particular, the nature of humanity in times of conflict. A Times Higher Education Book of the Week (September 2009). This collection of essays looks at first sight like one of those books of mostly previously published work that have been hung on a frame to give the impression of unity. But it is, in fact, a much more powerful, united and beautifully strange book than that. While academics are frequently exhorted to aspire to interdisciplinary work, this often boils down to tacking a discussion of a novel on to a piece of historical writing, or making reference to a few events to contextualise a picture. Real interdisciplinary work goes on when there is something unifying and unique beyond, or perhaps below, the academy's usual disciplinary boundaries. This is the case with Alex Danchev's work, and with this book. The range of these beautifully crafted essays is often dazzling. At his best, Danchev reveals himself to be a gifted and profound essayist. Alex Danchev's series of essays remind us why he is one of the most perceptive and witty scholars writing in Britain today. One of the most important books I have had the pleasure to read in a long time... When reading this thoughtful and thought-provoking book terms that come to mind include lucid, illuminating, mesmerizing, all of which are analytically weak but indicative nevertheless of what makes this book such a profound reading experience... The author is not impressed by disciplinary borders: borders are there to be ignored, frontiers are meeting-places. Art thinks. Art makes us think. Art makes us think otherwise. Art helps us make a judgement, a moral judgement.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Out of the Marvellous, or, Scholarship and the Magic Arts; 1. The Artist and the Terrorist, or, The Paintable and the Unpaintable: Gerhard Richter and the Baader-Meinhof Group; 2. The Face, or, Senseless Kindness: War Photography and the Ethics of Responsibility; 3. Provenance, or, Authenticity: The Guitar Player and the Arc of a Life; 4. Broomstick Horrors, or, The Fog-Walker in the Wood: Keeping up Appearances in the Great War; 5. The Strategy of Still Life, or, Art and Current Affairs: Georges Braque and the Occupation; 6. All This Happened, or, The Real Waugh: Sword of Honour and the Literature of the Second World War; 7. The Secret Life, or, The Soldier's Tale: Military Diaries; 8. Like a Dog, or, Animal House on the Night Shift: Kafka and Abu Ghraib; 9. It's All Fucked Up, or, The Non-Fiction Horror Movie: The Cinema and the War on Terror; 10. Waiting for the Barbarians, or, The Hospitality of War: Civilization and Barbarism in the War on Terror; Acknowledgements; Index.

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Book SynopsisThis book, newly available in paperback, offers a sustained demonstration of the way in which works of art can help us to explore the most difficult ethical and political issues of our time: war, terror, extermination, torture and abuse.Trade ReviewOn Art and War and Terror collects Alex Danchev's beautifully lucid and thoughtful essays on the most difficult issues of our age and, in particular, the nature of humanity in times of conflict. -- Karen Shook Times Higher Education Book of the Week (September 2009). This collection of essays looks at first sight like one of those books of mostly previously published work that have been hung on a frame to give the impression of unity. But it is, in fact, a much more powerful, united and beautifully strange book than that. While academics are frequently exhorted to aspire to interdisciplinary work, this often boils down to tacking a discussion of a novel on to a piece of historical writing, or making reference to a few events to contextualise a picture. Real interdisciplinary work goes on when there is something unifying and unique beyond, or perhaps below, the academy's usual disciplinary boundaries. This is the case with Alex Danchev's work, and with this book. -- Robert Eaglestone Times Higher Education The range of these beautifully crafted essays is often dazzling. At his best, Danchev reveals himself to be a gifted and profound essayist. -- Brian Cheyette The Independent Alex Danchev's series of essays remind us why he is one of the most perceptive and witty scholars writing in Britain today. -- Andrew Roberts The Sunday Telegraph (Reviews Editor) One of the most important books I have had the pleasure to read in a long time... When reading this thoughtful and thought-provoking book terms that come to mind include lucid, illuminating, mesmerizing, all of which are analytically weak but indicative nevertheless of what makes this book such a profound reading experience... The author is not impressed by disciplinary borders: borders are there to be ignored, frontiers are meeting-places. Art thinks. Art makes us think. Art makes us think otherwise. Art helps us make a judgement, a moral judgement. -- Frank Moller, University of Tampere Millennium: Journal of International Studies A deeply learned, far-reaching and thought-provoking book. International Affairs On Art and War and Terror collects Alex Danchev's beautifully lucid and thoughtful essays on the most difficult issues of our age and, in particular, the nature of humanity in times of conflict. Book of the Week (September 2009). This collection of essays looks at first sight like one of those books of mostly previously published work that have been hung on a frame to give the impression of unity. But it is, in fact, a much more powerful, united and beautifully strange book than that. While academics are frequently exhorted to aspire to interdisciplinary work, this often boils down to tacking a discussion of a novel on to a piece of historical writing, or making reference to a few events to contextualise a picture. Real interdisciplinary work goes on when there is something unifying and unique beyond, or perhaps below, the academy's usual disciplinary boundaries. This is the case with Alex Danchev's work, and with this book. The range of these beautifully crafted essays is often dazzling. At his best, Danchev reveals himself to be a gifted and profound essayist. Alex Danchev's series of essays remind us why he is one of the most perceptive and witty scholars writing in Britain today. One of the most important books I have had the pleasure to read in a long time... When reading this thoughtful and thought-provoking book terms that come to mind include lucid, illuminating, mesmerizing, all of which are analytically weak but indicative nevertheless of what makes this book such a profound reading experience... The author is not impressed by disciplinary borders: borders are there to be ignored, frontiers are meeting-places. Art thinks. Art makes us think. Art makes us think otherwise. Art helps us make a judgement, a moral judgement. A deeply learned, far-reaching and thought-provoking book.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Out of the Marvellous, or, Scholarship and the Magic Arts; 1. The Artist and the Terrorist, or, The Paintable and the Unpaintable: Gerhard Richter and the Baader-Meinhof Group; 2. The Face, or, Senseless Kindness: War Photography and the Ethics of Responsibility; 3. Provenance, or, Authenticity: The Guitar Player and the Arc of a Life; 4. Broomstick Horrors, or, The Fog-Walker in the Wood: Keeping up Appearances in the Great War; 5. The Strategy of Still Life, or, Art and Current Affairs: Georges Braque and the Occupation; 6. All This Happened, or, The Real Waugh: Sword of Honour and the Literature of the Second World War; 7. The Secret Life, or, The Soldier's Tale: Military Diaries; 8. Like a Dog, or, Animal House on the Night Shift: Kafka and Abu Ghraib; 9. It's All Fucked Up, or, The Non-Fiction Horror Movie: The Cinema and the War on Terror; 10. Waiting for the Barbarians, or, The Hospitality of War: Civilization and Barbarism in the War on Terror; Acknowledgements; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe Family Christmas Treasures collection of fine art and literature, at once both classic and contemporary, celebrates the warm, loving, family Christmas as it is enjoyed throughout the world. It focuses on the secular aspects of a family Christmas: spending time with loved ones, exchanging gifts, anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus, decorating the tree and home, cooking and feasting, caroling, and all the other delights that we associate with the magic of the season. Included are excerpts from such classics as Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker, as well as selections—including those from John Donne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and L. Frank Baum—that appear in their entirety. Christmas stories by major contemporary writers such as Maeve Binchy and Anna Quindlen provide a balance of old and new. Whether the family faithfully returns to such well-known classics as William Dean Howell’s Christmas Every Day or whether they eagerl

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Book SynopsisAnimation was once a relatively simple matter, using fairly primitive means to produce rather short films of subjects that were generally comedic and often quite childish. However, things have changed, and they continue changing at a maddening pace. One new technique after another has made it easier, faster, and above all cheaper to produce the material, which has taken on an increasing variety of forms. The A to Z of Animation and Cartoons is an introduction to all aspects of animation history and its development as a technology and industry beyond the familiar cartoons from the Disney and Warner Bros. Studios. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, photos, a bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on animators, directors, studios, techniques, films, and some of the best-known characters.

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Book SynopsisA reflection of American art's most iconic portraits that feature eyeglasses, and their significance to the artists--from Grant Wood to Alex Katz--through the lens of renowned art historian John Wilmerding.This book celebrates and interprets eyeglasses in American art through painting, prints, folk art, sculpture, and photography from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. Accompanying an exhibition at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, the book includes eighty works by illustrious artists such as Mary Cassatt and Alice Neel.Though we know eyeglasses are for looking through, we often overlook their role in portraits and figure images. This survey looks at their appearance and uses in American art, from 1784 when Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocal, to the present day. Spectacles in artwork served as emblems of literacy, fashion, and self-identity; old age and wisdom; inner or psychological vision; and sometimes just contemplation. Contemporary works i

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Book Synopsis"To compare the history of English watercolors into 160 pages might seem foolhardy, yet this jewel of a book does so with style."âPublisher's WeeklyTrade ReviewA jewel of a book. * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisThis book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett's 'Breath' within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse.

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Book SynopsisThis book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett's Breath within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines poets and artists in the Americas during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to show how they worked to make language into material objects and material objects into language.

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Book SynopsisThe third in a series of sketchbooks from long-time Disney animator and illustrator heavyweight Brian Kesinger.

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Book SynopsisChristian Small lived and painted in West Linton for over 60 years. Her work was of remarkable quality and range in many different media. Her choice of subjects was wonderfully imaginative: pears on a window sash, an armchair with slippers, her paint box – all so evocative of her life. Her landscapes were drawn from around the village, their colour and draftsmanship brilliantly capturing the countryside she loved: wind-bent trees, pale green grasses and the rolling Pentland Hills. Woven in and out of the paintings are poems by Gerda Stevenson, and Christian’s thoughts in prose as imagined with poignant eloquence by her daughter Jenny Alldridge – an unusual blend of word and image telling the unique story of a prolific and gifted artistTrade Review'One of the most beautiful books ever published in Scotland' - The National “Every picture tells a story, and this selection tells of lifetime creativity. Still-lifes, glowing, domestic, ordinary and marvellous, portrait studies full of the sitter’s life and individuality, the intimate landscapes daily walked in. Small things observed, relished.” – Liz Lochhead, poet

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Book SynopsisThe depth of history at Queen Anne’s Gate – a handsome Baroque street overlooking St James’s Park – is unusual even in London, and few houses resonate with more memories than the extraordinary number 14. The story of the house over the centuries features political revolutionaries, occult initiations, clandestine war meetings, and a decapitated head. It begins, however, as a museum of Roman sculpture, unrivalled outside Italy, designed for connoisseur and virtuoso Charles Townley (1737–1805). Townley embodied Enlightenment values perhaps more completely than any other figure in the art world of 18th-century Britain – his portrait by Johann Zoff any (seen above) is one of the iconic paintings of the period – yet remarkably he has never been the subject of a major publication. Written with a sparkle matching Townley’s own enthusiasm, this beautiful and engaging publication tells the story of 14 Queen Anne’s Gate and examines the extraordinary life of Charles Townley and his remarkable collection of over 150 Roman marble statues (mostly now in the British Museum but captured in spectacular engravings of the period). It will be a revelation. The house was designed as a temple to the past, reviving in the modern city the occult practices of the ancient world. Here visitors in eighteenth century would have found an assembly of Roman sculpture unrivalled outside Italy, as well as a library and collection devoted to understanding a universal ‘generative sprit’ worshipped by early civilizations. That spirit may be found in the succession of major roles the house has continued to take through generations of dramatic change up to the present day. Charles Townley, for whom the house was built, was a fi gure both marginal and emblematic. Catholic and bisexual, he forged a life literally on the borders of the Protestant British establishment. He remains little understood or appreciated in his homeland and, remarkably, has never been the subject of a major exhibition or publication. The ‘emblematic’ side of Townley’s life was dedicated to virtù, the term used for an appreciation of fi ne art pursued for its own sake. The ‘marginal’ side of Townley, by contrast, manifested itself in a fascination with the ancient occult, particularly the Bacchic mysteries. The house he made for himself was at once a temple to virtù and to Bacchus and contained an unprecedented programme of Bacchic iconography.

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Book SynopsisSince 1961 James Reeve has been exhibiting and selling his paintings, first in Florence, then in Madrid. From 1974 onwards he has travelled widely, often with subsequent London gallery exhibitions. Here he vividly describes and illustrates the characters he meets and the adventures which unfold in Haiti, Madagascar, India, Australia, Jordan, the Yemen and Mexico. As his cousin, the historian, Antonia Fraser remarks in a letter to him: ‘Dearest James, When God gave you your great artistic talent She [sic] made a big mistake, contrary to what is generally thought.’ ‘This is because you are really meant to be a brilliant writer.’ And so now, badgered by Antonia Fraser and other writer friends, James Reeve has at last put his talents together in a series of self-contained short stories recalling travels, anecdotes and encounters which he has illustrated with his vividly colourful vignettes. Always travelling with the purpose of work, in Italy James meets Harold Acton. In the Australian Outback he draws among other things dumps and decrepit dwellings, and there too is Madam Tongere catching a Wichetty grub. He meets Princess Elizabeth of Toro in Uganda and is captured by pygmies in the Congo forest. He paints the fearsome Mrs Gilbert Miller’s portrait in Palm Beach and travels in Rajasthan with Diana Wordsworth, a last relic of the Raj. At last, weary of wandering, he discovers a distant cloud-forest village in Mexico, where Edward James, as the only other Englishman, had preceded him. There he built a house. Living in Mexico for 35 years, among his friends are Doña Olive, the retired prostitute, and the Dominican nuns of an enclosed order who let him in to teach them how to make marmalade.Trade Review"Narrative artist James Reeve has never kept a diary, instead writing his long, detailed letters home from his extensive, worldwide travels. Finding these by chance in a trunk, carefully tied up with string and dated and labelled by his mother, he has used them as the basis for this part-memoir, part-travelogue and illustrated it with vividly colourful vignettes of experiences and encounters." * Artmag *"James Reeve belongs to that rare breed of artists who can write. . . . It is a delightfully entertaining, if often shocking, memoir, an escapist antidote to our lockdown times. . . . Reeve has an eye for vivid detail and captures the absurdity of life with aplomb. . . . The book is as quirky as it is quixotic, and all human life is here." * Daily Mail (UK) *

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Book SynopsisFor forty years, life in Afghanistan has been shaped by wars, the destruction of heritage, terrorist attacks, everyday fears and hopes, and migrations. In 2001, the Taliban government was overthrown by an international coalition bringing hopes of stability and reconstruction. The intervention did not however bring total peace. In this period of optimism, a number of international creation programs were set up as young Afghan artists returned from exile. Artists in the country - either self-taught having grown up under a Taliban regime that banned images, or trained during their exile - had no heritage to take on and no classical rules to break: anything seemed possible. Kharmohra is named after a gland taken from a donkey's neck that, on drying, becomes as hard as stone and is said to bring happiness by making the owner's most secret dreams come true. The metaphor is used to show how contemporary Afghan art is a long way from the romantic expectations with which Westerners often approach the country. The artists explore a wide variety of forms and media to express the horror of terrorism and the omnipresent shadow of death looming over the hostile urban environment. The works stand as an often humorous testimony to the peace that was promised but never delivered and the bitter illusions this fostered. All express a spirit of revolt against the most oppressive traditional forces that repress women and homosexuals as well as the Hazara ethnic group. Through their artistic practices, the artists show how salvation, however slight, is achievable.

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Book SynopsisAdeliza McHugh helped put the whimsical, funky, and irreverent aesthetic of California’s Central Valley on the art-historical map at her legendary Candy Store Gallery. Published on what would be the 60th anniversary of the gallery’s founding, this catalogue is the most significant to-date on the Candy Store and celebrates, as McHugh liked to say, art with a “kick.” In 1962, Adeliza McHugh opened the Candy Store Gallery in Folsom, California. The business began as a candy store, but when that closed, McHugh converted it into an art gallery. There, she featured ceramists and painters who would become nationally and even internationally significant, including Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Irving Marcus, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Jack Ogden, Sandra Shannonhouse, Peter VandenBerge, and Maija Peeples-Bright. Their work, along with that of many other artists, delighted visitors to the gallery for 30 years.

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